


The Two Thirteenth Doctors; or, Jodie and Joanna

by AtomMudman



Series: The Ballad of Karnation Lee [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka, Doctor Who: The Curse of Fatal Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 15:05:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16683880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtomMudman/pseuds/AtomMudman
Summary: The two Thirteenth Doctors meet! Featuring Jodie Whittaker's Doctor from the main universe and Joanna Lumley's Doctor from The Curse of Fatal Death. This is my effort to fit as many references to non/pseudo-canon Who into one story as I could.





	The Two Thirteenth Doctors; or, Jodie and Joanna

The two women sat at the small table sipping tea. The only lighting around them was a moody orange candlelight, though it didn't shine off of candles. It came from the large tangerine crystal that sprouted upward from the hexagonal platform that emerged from the elegantly-patterned floor. Ringing both this platform and the small checker-clothed table the women sat at was a half-dome cage, broken at some edges, made up of tiers of fist-sized metal-frame hexagons. The warm light emanating from the glowing geode in the center of the chamber sparkled on the surface of their tea.

 

The younger-looking of the two women decided to break the silence. “So. What's this all about, then?”

 

The older-looking woman seemed to ignore her. Her blonde hair, which the younger woman shared, was starting to get gray; but no one would ever tell her that, not to her face. The younger blonde thought she was beautiful, but if the stranger's words were correct, that was a little egotistical on her behalf. The elder-seeming individual was now looking up at the tall shadows of the room with great curiosity.

 

“You've redecorated,” she said at last.

 

“Several times,” her younger counterpart replied, slightly exacerbated.

 

“I don't like it,” said the aging woman, sipping her tea.

 

“Shoulda said it along with you, I know the words by now. I think it's a sweet look. Besides, what do you have gone on? Sheer white, still? With the roundels.” Then, after a brief pause, “Not like that's wrong or anything. I like the roundels. Love a good roundel.”  
  


“Hard to go wrong with a classic.”  
  


“True that.” She stared forward. “Seriously, though. I want to know who you are and what you're doing in my TARDIS.”

 

“ _Your_ TARDIS? The old girl recognizes me, despite a biodata divergence earlier in our lives. In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd say she likes me better.”

 

As the young woman looked back to glare judgmentally at the TARDIS console, her guest laughed loud and said, “Really, my dear, you'd better accept it. I'm the Doctor, whether you like it or not.”

 

“Don't get quote-y. I'm not in a quote-y mood right now.”

 

“I'm just trying to substantiate that we are the same person...Doctor.”

 

The Thirteenth Doctor raised an eyebrow. “Still sure you're not the Valeyard and all that?”  
  


“Hm. Well, I am on my final body. Unlike you, my body's out of regeneration energy. I suppose that means you're still a candidate for a little of the old, 'kill you and steal your remaining lives' ploy.” She laughed again. “But also, I'm not an unbearably pretentious _male_ , am I? Do you see me in a little black smock?”

 

“No, I guess not. So you're keeping up that you're the thirteenth me, then?”

 

“Only if you'll keep doing the same.”

 

“I am the thirteenth me! Well, that is you don't want to count Beardy-Grumpy. In some ways, I outrank you; that's fourteen mes, right there.”

 

“Do you ever notice that we tend to fight when we meet our other selves? Why do you think that is?”  
  


“I always assumed it was some sort of Blinovitch thing. Makes us feisty, like we haven't fully woken up yet and we're still waiting for coffee.”

 

“What about the Blinovitch sparks?” asked this other Thirteenth Doctor. “Did that convince you?”

 

“Yeah, we wouldn't be bursting up like that if we weren't supposed to be touching. Guess you're me, then.”

 

“Or you're me,” she grinned.

 

“I spotted that biodata divergence you brought up. If we're gonna figure out _why_ and _how_ we're both here, when we're deviations of each other, we need to figure out _when_ I became me and you became you.”

 

“Right.”

 

“Let's start with the easiest place,” the Doctor said. “Where were you during the War?”

 

“The War? Which one?”

 

“The Time War!” The Doctor was surprised her hands shot up the way they did. “You know, the Last Great Time War? Daleks, Time Lords? Thought we blew up Gallifrey but we didn't?”

 

“Never heard of it.”

 

“Okay. So you must have changed away from me before the War, then. Um. Do you remember a blond guy, with a cricket coat and celery on his lapel?”

 

“I do. Do _you_ remember an uptight rhetorician with a heart of gold dressed like clown vomit?”

 

“Ooh, ooh, I liked being him! What about the Scottish bloke? Ye tall, likes ties and sweaters and plotting.”

 

“That's me. How about a Victorian in a Buffalo Bill jacket, with a predilection for amnesia?”

 

“Well, we must have changed up there, because next me was...the guy with the gun. He was me when I fought in the Time War.”

 

“So you didn't become a long-haired rebel with a suit and tie, who just wanted to settle down and marry his lady-love?”

 

“No, that didn't happen till my twelfth body. Eleventh, technically. Your ninth incarnation, then, that's the first me that I never was.” She blinked. “Get married, you say? How'd that go?”

 

“Emma proved to be startlingly Stone Age once I took on this body. If we're being honest here she probably voted Leave in 2016.”

 

“Emma?” The Doctor looked down. “I had a companion named Emma once. But it was. Complicated.” Then she locked eyes with her counterpart. “Did she have blonde hair? Red pullover on a black dress?”

 

“Yes! That's her. You _did_ travel with her then.”

 

“Not quite. The woman I traveled back in my eighth incarnation with may not have existed.”

 

The other Doctor frowned. “What do you mean?”

 

“I mean that I remembered her initially as being named Sheena, but I couldn't figure out when she and I had started traveling together. Then she became Emma. A little after that, time glitched again and she was called Louise. And then she was gone completely. Does that name mean anything to you?”

 

The Doctor's face took on a mysterious look. “Louise? I don't recognize it directly. But it reminds me of one of the legends from our past. One of the things that couldn't be true, yet is remembered within the Web of Time. You know them well. Do you remember the Doctor Omega days? Can you think back to when our sixth self regenerated into a black man? Do you recall when we formed an intercalary incarnation between our second and third selves?” Her counterpart was silent. “There's one of us who's said to be human. Not half-human on our mother's side; not shifted sideways in species by a Chameleon Arch. Fully human. Distinctly  _not_ from the 49 th Century, admittedly. That's where  _I've_ heard the name Louise, anyway.”

 

“Interesting.” The Doctor looked uncomfortable. She began to realize, slowly, that this Doctor was preparing herself for death. So she had allowed her mind to dip into the darkest secrets of their respective history. She tried to remember now, if she'd thought about the same things on Trenzalore. But there were more important things to think about than that. “I think I have an explanation for why I saw your companion. Alternate timelines. That's it! It's just a normal timeline fork. Though why you and I can meet like this, I have no idea.”

 

“Benny told me once about meeting a Doctor from another universe. Sweet, older fellow, what would've happened if our '70s exile was in the '90s and we picked a different face at the trial. There was another version of the Master, too.”

 

“Ugh!” said the younger-seeming Doctor, who stuck her tongue out. “The Master. I've seen enough of her lately.”

 

“She?” The other Doctor looked amused. “Tell me. Who are your present companions?”  
  


“Me? Ah, I've got me fam!”

 

“Your what?”

 

“My—my fam? Family?”  
  


“Oh, you've started traveling with Susan again, how _cute_! I check in with her, now and again—she's stayed on Earth even though David's dead...but what's that in your eye, dear?”

 

“Sorry. Just, ah, just thinking about...”

 

“David?”

 

“Ah. David. David, yeah.”

 

“I'm sorry to bring it up. Who's this fam of yours?”

 

The Doctor seemed to perk up again. “Yaz, Ryan, and Graham,” she pronounced with a grin. “Best mates. Left 'em behind in their time on Earth for a little pop when I picked up your TARDIS. You should meet them!” She then took on a serious expression for a moment. “I hope they're not in any trouble...was it Liz the First or Second who was Queen in their era...?”

 

“I can't stop, I'm afraid,” said the Doctor hurriedly. “I'm actually caught up in some business. That's why I asked about your companions. So you'd ask about mine.”

 

“Okay...who are your companions?”

 

“I'm flying solo, right now. Don't got any.”

 

“Then why'd you bother making me ask?”

 

“Because the person I'm looking for is my former companion. My most recent one.”

 

“Oh? Gotten lost, have they?”

 

“They've been lost for a long time.”

 

The Doctor was at a loss for words at first; she stared ahead, thinking deeply. “Might as well start at the beginning, sounds like.”

 

“I was hoping you'd say something to that effect.” The other Doctor grinned and began her story.

 

“We deviated from each other at the end of our eighth incarnation, as we just found out. But I lost my ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth lives all in a singular incident.”

 

“And it wasn't a war?” the Doctor asked.

 

“No. It was a battle with the Master.”

 

The Doctor from the local cosmos once more wrinkled up her face.

 

“I had been traveling in my ninth incarnation for some time,” the other Doctor continued. “Many hundreds of years. I lost track of how long it was exactly. But I eventually ended up in Emma's company. I knew she would age and die, but I loved her, very deeply. I figured if my granddaughter could marry a human, so could I. So I intended to...retire from what is you and I do. The Master confronted me, having been absent from my life for some time. There were whispers on Gallifrey that he had been killed shortly after he stepped down as War King and regenerated, giving up his hair, his beard, and his rosette. He gave our seventh and eighth selves some trouble in that bald body. Teamed up with his crispy self, too.”  
  


“I remember,” the Doctor said.

 

“But I assumed his death was exaggerated. He was back in a bearded body and camp as ever. He exclaimed he wanted revenge on me, same as always, but I talked him into a conference on Tersurus. I was secretly hoping to gain a small emotional edge on him, because Tersurus was where he was disfigured the first time, in his thirteenth body. Also, Tersurus was where I took Susan, when Rassilon was coming down on Patience and I—”

 

“What now?”

 

“I'll explain later. But what matters is I had a _familial_ connection to Tersurus, which I'll get into. I was distracted at first because I remembered witnessing Emma and myself here in my eighth body; it was in the Tomorrow Windows, you do recall?” She laughed. “It reminded me of how the Master's dad thought I had three ninth selves. Me as I was then, plus a sad man with a gray beard, and a short-haired chap in a leather jacket.”

 

“That was the path I went down,” the Doctor said. “I wonder why the timelines split. Aside from, that's what timelines do. You would've existed in some form no matter what.”

 

“I don't know. I think it had to do with the legacy our past selves left behind.” The elder Doctor stared at her counterpart. “Our seventh and eighth selves, and all of their plots and schemes.”

 

“I thought I'd left that rubbish behind with short Scotsman when I regenerated,” the Doctor sighed. “But it seemed the Web of Time just couldn't go on without my tripping over it. There was Tannis. My last challenge before transporting the Master's remains to where they belonged.”

 

“And later, Charley found the airship,” the other Doctor said. “Where we had to take Tianna, and Grant, and—and Sam. That's what changed things—split our beginnings. When you left San Francisco you met Sam after falling into one of the Master's traps. You journeyed with her and Fitz and Compassion, all the way up to when we were with Izzy and Destrii. But we also left San Francisco to start traveling with Samson and Gemma. Then there was Mary Shelley, and Charley. And C'rizz. Molly. Tamsin.”

 

“Stop,” the Doctor said. “This is getting us nowhere. Continue with your story. You met the Master on Tersurus, and then...?”  
  


“I told him I was retiring to get married. He didn't care a fig and tried to kill me.”

 

“Figures. He's so predictable.”

 

“Isn't he just? I had the upper hand on him, because I knew the architect. Girl named Larna. Again, a family matter—she'd gone back there out of sentimentality, since that was our first adventure together. Well, we were interrupted by the Daleks. He aligned himself with them, and during the struggle I was badly hurt. Shot by a Dalek, actually. I had to regenerate, and I did. I wasn't old-looking in that body but I emerged looking considerably younger. Emma said the post-regenerative trauma was terribly embarrassing. I apparently licked a mirror. But in this tenth life, I only briefly remember being on Tersurus. A few moments after my 'birth' I was time-scooped away from Emma and my enemies.”

 

“Time-scooped? Who was it—Borusa? Taking you back to the Death Zone?”

 

“If only. I ended up on Gallifrey in my personal past. The Time Lords there believed I was the incarnation immediately following my eighth self. I met up with Romana. It was there that I met her daughter.”

 

The Doctor shook her head. “Romana's daughter?”

 

“She told me that I would be returned to my proper place in time, but for now I was in the employ of the CIA. I hated it, and in a way I hated the President's daughter, when she began traveling with me on behalf of the Agency. I thought she was betraying her mother by hobnobbing with thugs like Vansell and his ilk. But she was the second President's daughter I stole. This time in a much more romantic sense. In time I forgot about Emma, and about returning to Tersurus for her. I couldn't have, anyway, with the Time Lords in control of my TARDIS.

 

“We traveled together until we were informed that the Daleks had been hunting the Master, wrecking planets all along the way. My...companion and I hunted them down. We encountered the Master in his bald form. He was much older than he'd been last time we'd fought.

 

“He was desperate to destroy the Daleks. So desperate he even agreed to work with me. But my lover, she, uh. She tried to be a bit too heroic.”

 

The Doctor knew that look in her counterpart's eyes. “I'm so sorry. The Daleks...shouldn't have gotten another one.”

 

“No, they shouldn't have. But the Master _had_ let time change him. He later said it was a spur-of-the-moment mistake—yet he went after the Daleks when he heard my cry of pain. He went in a blaze of glory. Or he seemed to.

 

“When he got back up he was badly injured—burned, specifically. He was _furious_. And he blamed me. He would have killed me if he had the strength; I don't know why he couldn't regenerate. However, I realized he was dying. I couldn't save my companion, but I could save him.

 

“So I took him back to the TARDIS, and, knowing he could survive the trip, I threw him into the Eye of Harmony.”

 

“Third time's the charm,” said the Doctor.

 

“His body was destroyed, but he lived on in the vortex as a disembodied essence. Some of the usual problems came up, of course. Tried to take over the TARDIS controls. And possess the minds of my guests, when I had them. During this time, his spirit sort of manifested in that body he stole in 1999, the one with the sunglasses. Dresssszed for the occasion once again—with a beard this time.”

 

“He looks odd clean-shaven. Or she. Ohhh, Missy should've gotten the beard...”

 

“An-y-way. The Time Lords found out I was carrying the Master in my TARDIS. They scheduled for me to crash on the planet Jupiter, in the 41st Century. It had had a Dyson sphere built around it at that point, and cities built on top of the Dyson sphere. In the crash, the Eye as it was contained in the TARDIS was damaged. It was bleeding raw artron energy, and eroding the Master's essence in the process. But he was dragging the TARDIS down with him. Unless I could find a vessel to store him in, the TARDIS would die.

 

“I immediately starting asking around for a roboticist, and discovered that a scandal had surrounded a local engineer by the name of Lee. He had invented a machine which had created a time-tunnel in the 29th Century. I confronted him and learned that he was normally accustomed to robotics. In fact, he was Karnation Lee.”

 

“Karnation Lee!” exclaimed the younger-looking Doctor. “He worked on the Peking Homunculi of the Supreme Alliance! He invented the headless androids of the Robot Development Cartel! He built the Robo-Butchers of the Twenty-Seventh Cabal of the Terrible Zodin! And he developed human history's objective greatest spaghetti carbonara.”

 

“X-51, Kamelion, and Antimony each owe something to him. In any case, I paid him a considerable fee to construct a new body for my dying friend. I based it off of how he was on Earth in the '70s; with the Axons and the Sea Devils and whatnot. But I couldn't help but request a hint from the version who died on Skaro, at the end of our seventh life...”

 

“The one with the Tzun body? Looked like an evil Sherlock Holmes, with creepy yellow eyes?”

 

“That's the one. So the Master was reborn; this time, as an android. I suddenly realized why he was so mad at me back on Tersurus.

 

“It was all arranged by the Time Lords. I was bitter at them at the time. They wanted these exact circumstances to play out; with the Master a robot and everything. That's why they'd arranged my crash. I traveled without him for a while when they locked him up on Gallifrey to tinker with his mental limiters. When it got lonely, I brought up a hologram of our fifth self to keep me company. All the holos I'd recorded of my other selves had been erased; they wanted _this_ me to serve as a moral guide. But he and I stayed up late at nights talking about how pointless this all was. Even _that_ me had a rebel in him.

 

“When the Master was returned to my custody he became my traveling partner for some time. Though it wasn't really traveling so much as being bounced up and down like a galactic yo-yo. We ended up on Earth in 2003, where I gained another companion. Only this was a friend. More than an enemy, less a lover, was dear Alison. She helped me defeat the Shalka, as well as a vampiric entity. She stayed with me up until the Master's mechanical form was converted back to flesh in the radiations of the Pinocchio Rift, which triggered a regeneration. To my surprise, his new form was identical to the one he wore when he challenged me on Tersurus.

 

“Shortly thereafter, while it was all still fresh in my mind, I was time-scooped back to Tersurus. It all came back to me. The Daleks. The Master. Emma. In my confusion, I was killed by a faulty machine. Once more I regenerated, seemingly moments after I had before. My tenth life, or perhaps my ninth, had come to a close.

 

“The man who stood up was heavier, older, and balder. Again, post-regenerative trauma kicked in and I was convinced that Emma was going to hurt me. In the middle of the fray I was once more time-scooped away by the Time Lords.”

 

“What, again?” exclaimed the Doctor. “CIA blokes, was it?”

 

“Exactly. They threw me out to the 1,000,000th Century, where I met an Earth girl named Fiona. She got me hooked back on terrible fashion sense. Ended up blending a bunch of my different outfits together. I was hideous. Anyway, the Time Lords brought me there just so I could take care of a monster called 'Crayola.' No relation to the crayons, though it looked like a bunch of them melted down. Then, just as I was used to that body, and to Fiona—never caught her last name—I was back on Tersurus, via time-scoop. But before I was sent back, I was taken to Gallifrey. The CIA told me the real reason why my eleventh self had been removed. They needed to warn me that as I resumed my timeline on Tersurus, the dark side of my psyche would rear up and seize control.”

 

“The Valeyard,” the Doctor whispered.

 

“When my eleventh self died on Tersurus, I turned briefly in a young, handsome twelfth incarnation. In him my love for Emma gave flowing back after centuries. But rising also out of the centuries was the Valeyard. What remained of his essence in my mind saw how weak I was from returning to this singular moment in time over and over again. But my contingency took over. Moments after I took on this twelfth body, I pushed myself past my limits and regenerated again. I wasn't expecting this final regeneration to be so explosive.”

 

“Yeah, it can deal a real number on Daleks.”

 

“And so it did. The Valeyard died with them, bound to my twelfth body as I intentionally destroyed it. And so, in the end, I found myself a woman. Bereft of regenerations, but alive. And to Emma and the Master, it had all taken just around twenty minutes.”

 

“So that's the Tersurus story?”

 

“That's the short version. There's just one more detail, short of Emma canceling our engagement. There was a...vacuum left open.”

 

“A vacuum? Like a wedding vacuum?”

 

“I wasn't just going to not have a wedding. Fortunately, the Master remembered our old friendship, from my tenth incarnation. And he could not sustain his hatred. In fact, it turned inside out. Into attraction.”

 

“You didn't!”  
  


“Don't tell me you've never thought of it.”

 

“Well, maybe for a quick snuggle. Or if we were captured by Davros and we need to confuse him with a snog to get out.”

 

“That works, trust me. But you see, the problem was...our feelings were not genuine.”

 

“Ohh, he was taking advantage of you to lead him into a trap!”

 

“No. It's odd, but...his feelings were sincere. Whereas mine were just more post-regenerative trauma.” She stared off into the distance. “I kept putting the wedding off, leading him on all across the universe. We shared my TARDIS, but I used every opportunity I could to sneak back to the ship during our adventures to spend a few decades on my own, before coming back to finish things out. I had to avoid running into him again, as any of his selves. Nearly caught me once...I changed the desktop theme when I was off with a couple of new friends, and he noticed the difference when we concluded our outing.”

 

“I can't imagine this stayed good for very long.”

 

“No. He was still _himself_ —still the Master. He caught on in time, and we had a fight. He knocked me out of the TARDIS while it was in motion, stealing it for himself in the process. I barely survived the journey through the time vortex. And then I found myself in hanging suddenly over the Earth. In space.”

 

“I feel for ya. It's no fun being dumped out of your TARDIS and having to deal with gravity right after.”

 

“Except I wasn't affected by Earth's gravity. Just cold. And unable to breathe.”

 

“But then I picked up the artron echo off your TARDIS and...well, safe to say we know the rest, huh?”

 

“I must have crossed into your timeline because of being chucked into the vortex. And if my glance at your instruments is correct...I'm not alone.”

 

“The Master?”

 

“Who else?”

 

“Oh dear. Well. At least there's little chance of him finding his current self from his timeline now...awkward circumstances. Still not sure what happened.”

 

“Well, good. A cosmos with two Masters scarcely bears thinking about.”

 

“What's the plan? This is my TARDIS; I can steer us to where we need to go.”

 

“No need,” said the older-seeming Doctor. “You learned to open the front doors with a finger-click, right?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Well, watch this.” The Doctor raised her fingers, and snapped.

 

Immediately, the orange crystal in the center of the console began rising up and dropping down. The usual wheezing sound echoed through the vast chamber. The Doctor who owned this TARDIS stood and watched as the controls adjusted themselves.

 

“We'll be arriving soon.”

 

“Arriving where?!” the Doctor exclaimed.

 

“The Pinocchio Rift. It exists in both timelines.” Then the TARDIS stopped. “Specifically, we're visiting a planet within it. It's called Monstro.”

 

“Oh, that sounds fun. What came we expect?”

 

“Well, it's the Pinocchio Rift. The radiations here have a tendency to begin converting machinery into organic material. So no sonic screwdriver.”

 

“Good thing the TARDIS won't be affected,” the Doctor said. “She's already part-biomatter. I'll keep the shields up just in case.”

 

“You've never been here before?”

 

“Meant to come with Susan, after Akhaten. But I didn't really have anything cool to convert. Plus I thought she'd think it'd be a little creepy.” Now she raised her hand, and snapped her fingers. The door opened, revealing a rocky surface and a starry void. This star-studded outlook was colored green by the jelly-smear of a nebula.

 

“Ladies first,” she said then. “Ooh! I guess I count as that too. Sorry.”

 

“You'll get used to it,” said the other Doctor. She grinned and walked out through the front doors, onto this rock in the drifting radioactive rift.

 

The radiation here was harmless to most organics, including Time Lords, it seemed. Made sense, given that the Master was hiding out here. In a Time Lord body, apparently; not a Trakenite or a human or an android. The Doctor had always known better than to rule out Deathworm Morphants, though. Those were supposed to have gone extinct during the Time War but so were a lot of other species.

 

“It's beautiful,” she said.

 

“Isn't it?” said the other Doctor. She adjusted the folds of her dark red dress and stared out with wild, enterprising eyes. “It's like Earth's moon, but craggier. The cracks and rock formations seem almost ornamental.”

 

“Does anyone naturally live here?”

 

“A race of rock-humans. They were first animated when the Rift activated and started real-boying things.” She looked over at herself. “That's what the prospectors here call it. Real-boying.”

 

“What do they mine?”

 

“The rock here is alive. They mine it before it can take on an animal shape. There's a lot of uses for living rock, you know.”

 

“Ahh, that's neat. But you're sure they're not, like, killing rock babies?”

 

“They wouldn't be here if I knew it was such. I check these things, you know.”

 

“Oy, don't get shirty! I check these things too. Now. Are we finding the Master? Or are we gonna start calling each other names like Fancy Pants and Scarecrow?”

 

“You're right. Let's get a move on.”

 

“Or a shift.”

 

“What?”

 

The Doctor flashed a smile. “I'll explain later,” she said.

 

They began walking across the surface. The atmosphere was probably too thin here for Yaz and the boys, the Doctor considered. Sometimes she still had trouble getting why you'd go with just one heart. It just gave too much benefit to pass up.

 

“Okay, intel,” she said then. “What is the Master doing here?”

 

“I'm not sure. As I mentioned it's the birthplace of his current incarnation. Nostalgia?”

 

“No, the Master doesn't get nostalgic. But then, they're not really the romantic type either. Do you suppose it's just symbolism around the trap?”

 

“What do you mean?”

  
“I mean, he's trying to say, 'Look honey, it's where I was born! Now you have to take me back!'”

 

The Doctor stared at her younger-looking counterpart. “You haven't dated in a while, have you.”

 

“Well, relatively. But do you see what I mean?”

 

“Sort of. He would be very strange in trying to be...romantically ironic. I wonder if his guest made it aboard my ship as well, or if he was left behind.”

 

“His guest?”

 

“I mentioned him before. Karnation Lee. The roboticist, who helped me bring the Master back.”

 

“Working together, then.”

 

“Nailed it.”

 

“Why would the Master need robots? Particularly those converted into flesh?”

 

“He always needs an army. He's keen on forming armies if the mood strikes him. Usually teams up with the Daleks, but I think that's just my bad luck most of the time.”

 

“Well, if experience is anything, then we'll figure things out by making him blab his plan. Shouldn't be too hard. We just have to show up.”

 

“Yes. In fact—your eyes are better than mine. Does that man in black have a beard?”

 

The Doctor's eyes widened, and she turned to look at where her other self was pointing. A few hundred yards away was the mouth of a small cave. A figure stood at the mouth of it. He was a bearded figure, grinning, dressed in black.

 

“Alright,” the Doctor said then, adjusting her suspenders. “Last time I did this, it was one Doctor, two Masters. Let's go turn some tables.”

 

“Kind of wished there'd been two of them when I still liked him,” said the other Doctor quietly.

 

Though this incarnation wasn't “her” Master—she didn't have a Master matched up yet—it was the young-seeming Doctor who led the way. The Master had his black-gloved hands folded before him, and the expression on his face was almost welcoming, if they forgot who he was.

 

“Greetings, my dear Doctors,” he said. His hushed voice was overly familiar to both of them. “I was not expecting a pair of you, but you're always full of surprises.”

 

“As are you,” said the foremost Doctor. “What are you up to this time?”

 

“You've combed your hair since you stole my ship,” the other Thirteenth Doctor said. “And...have you dyed it? Taken the gray out a little?”

 

“Your words mean very little to me, I'm afraid, Doctor. Not as a matter of confusion, mind you, but because your frivolous attempts at emotional barbs do not scratch my pride at all.”

 

“Evidently.”

 

“I am here on Monstro because this planet's unique properties have been very valuable to me. Nearly as valuable as your TARDIS. It enabled me to determine that I have ended up in another timeline. But with the aid of your TARDIS I'll be able to return to our proper cosmos, and use what I've taken here to carry out my revenge.”  
  


“Listen,” said the young-looking Doctor. “You're not going to stop us. We're going into that cave and you can't stand in our way.”

 

“Is that so? Well, I'm afraid that I've something that will change your mind.” Reaching into the pockets of his trousers he produced a staser pistol. “It's all I was able to get away when I commandeered your TARDIS. I had to leave my TCE behind—and my laser screwdriver. But it's more than adequate to chop away whatever lives you have left. Goodbye, Doctors!”

 

“Run!” shouted the Doctor at the fore. She took the wrist of her red-dressed counterpart for a brief moment, and they ran together. Leaving only the phantom trail of early-formation Blinovitch sparks.

 

As she ran, the Thirteenth Doctor from this timeline thought to herself why the Blinovitch limitation effect was so active between this incarnation and herself, when during the Omega business and the Death Zone and all else there'd never been problems with shaking his own hand. Must have been due to their being from alternate timelines. Her other self must have thought they were going back to the TARDIS. But she had a different plan.

 

“Hold up,” she said, turning around. She swung her arm out in an overhead arc, and in her hand was the silver-orange form of her sonic screwdriver.

 

“I thought we said no sonics!” the other Doctor shouted. “They'll come to life under this radiation!”

 

“Hello, Doctor,” said the sonic screwdriver as she gripped it. It had a rich, sleek voice, like Jeremy Irons. “I love you. I'm so glad you use me. Have I ever told you that?”

 

“I love you too, but this is no time to get mushy,” she replied. “I need you to break the Master's staser. Can you do that?”

 

“Absolutely! Anything for you, my dearest friend.”

 

Behind her, the other Doctor said under her breath, “Ohh, the things _mine_ would say to me at this point...”

 

In the distance, the Master's staser pistol sparked and broke. He gave an angry cry, but then something strange happened. The Master's _hands_ sparked and broke.

 

“Whoa! Sonic...what happened?” She blinked. “Okay, delayed reaction to the living sonic. Little weird, not gonna lie. But what now?”

 

“That is not the Master. That is an android disguised as the Master.”

 

“And you're sure it's not a shell for containing the Master's biodata?” the older-seeming Doctor called.

 

“Negative. It scanned the Master's brainwaves but it is not him.”

 

“Thank you, sonic,” said the Doctor holding the instrument.

 

“Thank _you_ , Doctor. For being here.”

 

“Awww. The sonic likes me!”

 

“I _love_ you.”

 

The elder Doctor rolled her eyes, and began to walk back towards the cave—where “the Master” was nothing more than a smoking mess.

 

“Lee caused this, of course,” she said. “The Master must have allowed him to build a robot double, sort of ironic joke on his past. He even loaned out his brainwaves. And so I'm hoping that Lee is still here—so he can lead me to where the _real_ Master is.”

 

“We're just lucky the conversion wasn't complete, or he'd be a new Master. With a new set of regenerations,” the Doctor said.

 

“Just don't stare at the parts too long. They're going to start turning into animals.”

 

The Doctor, for once, had no response. Or maybe she was distracted by the fact that a figure was emerging now from the darkness.

 

“Listen...if you're gonna hurt me...might as well be upfront with it.”

 

The rough voice was familiar somehow to her. But the other Doctor knew it very well. “I won't hurt you, Lee, if you come out peacefully.”

 

“We'll all come out.”

 

“All...?”

 

A figure emerged slowly from the darkness of the cave, with his hands up. He was a rough-looking man, with haunted eyes, sallow cheeks, and a toothpick in his mouth. His hair looked unwashed and yet strangely stylish. He was dressed in a white suit, with white pants to go with it—white shoes, too. And a black necktie underneath. On his lapel was a carnation, the least wilted part of him.

 

Joining him was another man and a young woman. The man was oddly familiar, having close-cut ginger hair that naturally curled tight. He had hard eyes set in a wide, aging face, and his body was clad in a dark, flowing outfit. The Doctor found herself wondering why he made her think of Commander Maxil, back on Gallifrey.

 

The other woman was also uncanny-familiar. Her face, too, was hard, but at least the dark sweater she wore looked comfortable. That stern face was obscured by the long black hair which hung down freely to shroud her neck.

 

“This is Solomon, a representative from The Protectorate,” Lee said. “And this young woman is Alice Perkins, a time-traveler like ourselves. She's been briefly separated from her uncle Dominic.”

 

“Like if Ace was from the Observe,” was what the Doctor heard her other self say.

 

“Please, we are just travelers,” Lee continued. “That's all I ever wanted to be when I joined with the Master. And—I also thought he could teach me more about robotics.”

 

“He could, but he'd kill you after,” the Doctor said. “Are you really ready to surrender?”

 

“Sure as my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather's name was Cyrus Zingrave,” Lee said. “You know, he was the worst enemy of my other great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Nelson Lee. A hard-knock life, booze-for-breakfast detective. I inherited his rotten-liver eyes.”

 

“He wasn't hard-knock at all, he was the Dressing-Gown Detective!” the Doctor explained then. “He was like a second or third Sherlock Holmes. Don't you dare insult Nelson Lee in my presence.”  
  


“Wait, you finally got around to visiting Nelson Lee?” the other Doctor asked. “Hm. Lucky you.”

 

“He's a nice guy. Look him up someday when you get home.”

 

“Yes, well...I have to catch the Master first.” She looked at Lee intently. “Did he say where he was going? I assume he left you here in my TARDIS.”

 

“He said that he's heading for Earth, World War I. He dared you to follow and stop him.”

 

“That jackanapes. Hasn't that War been tampered with enough?” The other Doctor sighed. “I have no choice. I have to keep going.”

 

She raised her hand and once more snapped her fingers. The unique wheezing sound of the TARDIS became audible.

 

“What are you doing?” said the Doctor. “Did you call the TARDIS?”

 

“Stattenheim remote control. Broken down to a cloud of nanoparticles woven into the fabric of my dress.” The TARDIS faded into view behind her. The three strangers from the cave merely stared at it, each recognizing it in their own way.

 

“Ohhh, brilliant,” the Doctor gasped. “I haven't had once of those since I worked for the CIA!”

 

“Or was it the Monk?” grinned the other Doctor. She stepped over to the TARDIS and opened the door. But to the Doctor's surprise, the insides glowed orange. Inside the door—it was _her_ console chamber.

 

“Wait, hold on, is that _my_ TARDIS? Oh! The Master severed the control link between your remote and your TARDIS! No wonder we had to go looking for it.”

 

“Well, this one will do.” She looked at her counterpart, and a sad look broke out on her face. “I'm sorry to do this. But _my_ version of the Master is so much more _different_ than yours. Our rivalry is so much more personal because of who we once were to each other.”

 

“I doubt it was much different from what he and I and he and you both had together on Gallifrey,” said the Doctor, “in the beginning.”

 

“But I'll return your ship. I promise.”

 

“No—wait!” The Doctor watched as her counterpart turned her back, and closed the door behind her as she approached the controls. “Argh! I only just got her back! _After_ only just getting her back!”

 

The sound of the TARDIS engine started up again, but with her gray coat billowing behind her the Doctor sprinted and lunged for the ship. She grabbed onto the outer shell and hung on tight, vowing to herself that if Jack Harkness could do this, so could she...

 

She thought she heard Karnation Lee yell a tardy warning. Sweet of him, really, but too little, too late.

 

Almost at once it was too much for her. History repeated itself, with another Thirteenth Doctor. Once the ship entered the time vortex, she lost her grip, and plunged down to another world.

 

The Pinocchio Rift and the barren planet Monstro were gone. In their place was a bright orange sun, and drifting clouds. The Doctor looked around. She was on her back, on a flat, brown metal platform. In the distance she could see other metal platforms linked to this one.

 

She didn't recognize the planet. And when she sat up, she didn't recognize the four blonde women who were staring at her either.

 

“Hello,” she said. “I'm the Doctor!” And she flashed the widest grin she could.

 

_To be continued!_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Every external reference is a nod to some part of Doctor Who history, but the Pinocchio Rift, the planet Monstro, and the character of Karnation Lee are original creations.


End file.
